News

With spring approaching, gas prices are on the rise across the country and in central New York. And the increase may be a little more dramatic at pumps in the Syracuse area.

According to the AAA Western and Central New York, this region watched the price at the pump jump an average of 22 cents a gallon last month. And that’s pretty typical for this time of year, as oil companies make the expensive switch from winter to summer blend fuels, and take some refineries offline for maintenance.

A sharply divided city argues over whether to keep a major transit link running through downtown, or to route it around the outskirts of town.

It’s nearly the same debate going on today, but this was in the 1920s. Then, Syracuse was arguing over whether to build an elevated rail corridor through downtown, as Dennis Connors, curator of the Onondaga Historical Association explains.

"And there was a whole campaign, the pro-leave it downtown and elevate it, versus the move it out of downtown and put it around the north side of the city," he said.

Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) stopped at college campuses across upstate New York Monday, continuing her push to get support for a bill that would combat sexual violence on college campuses. Her last stop was at Syracuse University’s Maxwell School.

When Meaghan Greeley was sexually assaulted on a college campus six years ago, there wasn’t much help for her.

"There were no confidential advocates to turn to for support. The administrators or staff members I sought guidance from had never received any training in how to advise me or support me,” said Greeley.

Teachers have been holding rallies all around the state protesting Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s education proposals, and hundreds are expected to converge on the Capitol late Monday to protest over reliance on standardized tests, and other issues. Cuomo has called the teachers unions part of a “bloated bureaucracy” that he says needs to be broken. He wants teacher performance reviews to rely more on standardized test results, and he’d like 100 more charter schools in New York.

Central New York’s public transit system is facing a sizeable budget gap and it's proposing a major reduction in service if more funding isn’t provided.

This is not the first year Centro has spent more money running buses in its four central New York county service area than it’s taken in to do so, but according to the public transit authority’s executive director, Frank Kobliski, they’ve run out of one-time funding streams to fill the hole.

As this seemingly never-ending winter of record cold temperatures and stubborn snowstorms drags on in central New York, it seems hard to believe that a new season is around the corner. But, spring is lurking beneath the snow pack.

Reading is a common activity before bed. A lot of people like to cuddle up with a book or magazine before they turn in for the night. In the 21st century, cell phones and tablets have been added to that list of materials. Though reading is often meant to help us fall asleep, the light emitted from reading devices can actually keep us awake.

If kids spend a lot of time in front of display screens, is it bad for the environment? Having a visceral connection to the outdoors is key to good environmental stewardship, argues this week’s guest on the Campbell Conversations. Grant Reeher talks about habitat, species, and politics with Collin O’Mara, the current President and CEO of the National Wildlife Federation. O’Mara is a former Delaware state cabinet official, a native of Camillus, New York, and the inventor of the City of Syracuse’s Syrastat system.

This year's deep, prolonged freeze has sent frost as much as six feet underground -- deeper than usual. The result is a lot of frozen pipes. Towns, villages and cities across the region report problems with frozen water systems. The deep freeze has also been hard on farmers.

Kevin teRiele is a dairy farmer in Canton who is tired of winter in part, because it makes his work harder. "The biggest issue for most of us is frozen manure," he said.

Onondaga County lawmakers will again be able to weigh in on the decision about the future of Interstate 81. Legislature Chairman Ryan McMahon will ask lawmakers to stand behind the option he believes is the best compromise among the plans being discussed.

Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand announced a bipartisan bill on Thursday that would hold colleges accountable for sexual assaults.

She says that under the current system, colleges have incentives to hush up assaults. They’re bad publicity and scare away prospective students. Her bill aims to change that. It creates a national anonymous survey for students to report sexual assaults. Results for each college would be public online.

If reading in bed is something you've always done, you may want to think twice about using your smartphone or tablet for your nighttime reading. This week on “Take Care,” WRVO's weekly health and wellness show, hosts Linda Lowen and Lorraine Rapp speak with Dr. Lois Krahn, a psychiatrist with the Sleep Disorders Clinic at Mayo Clinic Arizona, about how too much screen time could be disturbing your sleep.

The Cayuga Indian Nation will have to continue to sort out a leadership dispute on its own, as the federal government has declined to make a ruling.

The Bureau of Indian Affairs has decided that on an interim basis, it will continue to recognize the 2006 leadership structure of the Cayuga, which places Clint Halftown as the federal representative for the nation.

More Fort Drum troops got official orders to ship off to Afghanistan. They will leave this spring and summer.

Over 1,600 soldiers with the 2nd Brigade Combat Team will do one of three things in southern Afghanistan: One, protect U.S. forces on bases; two, serve as staff with the Train Advise Assist Command unit; or three advise the Afghan National Army and police.

The cities of Syracuse, Oswego, Watertown and more than a dozen towns and villages in Jefferson County are urging residents to run a trickle of water through a faucet to keep pipes from freezing. One of them is the village Mannsville, south of Watertown. David Sommerstein spoke with the village Mayor Lori Cashel. She says she can’t remember freezing pipes being this much of problem in decades.

Newly-elected Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie made clear one of his top priorities in his first news conference, where he called for passage of the Dream Act, which would offer college aid to children of undocumented immigrants.

Heastie says when it comes to helping young New Yorkers with paying for college, there’s a double standard.

This is the latest installment in our ongoing series on the health risks of nursing.

Emily Roth sits in a café after a long weekend shift. The 27-year-old obstetrics nurse eats a sandwich and gushes about her 15-month-old daughter. Her smile puffs her cheeks up, lifting her brown rectangular-framed glasses away from her face.

Roth has been a nurse for three years and she loves her job, but she hasn’t always felt that way.

"I was going home pretty stressed out on a regular basis. I would go home and cry to my husband sometimes," she said.

The freezing weather continues around central and northern New York and that's causing problems for homeowners dealing with frozen pipes. The problem has gotten so bad in the city of Oswego, that Mayor Tom Gillen has declared a state of emergency in the city.

In a news release, Gillen says that at least 25 homes in several neighborhoods have no water due to frozen pipes. Without water, some residents are left with no heat as well. Gillen says it could be several days before all the pipes are thawed and residents have their water running again.

Budget talks began Wednesday, as Gov. Andrew Cuomo met behind closed doors with legislative leaders to discuss school aid, economic development proposals and ethics reform. Cuomo’s push to reform practices in the legislature comes at a time when his nearly $1 million book deal is coming under closer scrutiny.

A Syracuse lawmaker is back with a third attempt to penalize people responsible for impassible sidewalks because of snow.

City councilor Bob Dougherty tried twice last year to impose fines for residents and businesses that didn’t shovel their sidewalks after a snowfall, but both were defeated.

Now, Dougherty wants to go after private plow drivers. "I haven’t been able to pass the stuff about clearing sidewalks, but at least this will address mainly the business owners that have the snow plowed up onto the sidewalk, boxing intersections," he said.

The Syracuse school district could be down a million dollars because of an unintended consequence of vacant properties being sold to the land bank.

Property tax collection is a major source of funding for public schools, but there are thousands of properties in Syracuse that the property taxes aren’t being collected on – either because they’re vacant or the owner isn’t paying. For those properties, the city has been covering the portion that would go to schools out of its own pocket.

A state wage board has agreed to raise the minimum wage for tipped workers from $5.00 to $7.50 an hour. Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced the change at a rally with union leaders.

Cuomo, speaking to the union members, renewed his call to raise the state’s minimum wage for non-tipped workers to $10.50 an hour in the state, and $11.50 in New York City. Cuomo says businesses are making record profits .

“Business is doing well, God bless them,” Cuomo said. “But it is time that they share. We are looking at a polarization of income in this country like we’ve never seen before.”

The city of Utica has climbed its way out of near bankruptcy to post a sizeable budget surplus.

Utica’s government is smaller, shedding about 100 jobs in recent years. "Fire had cuts, police had cuts, city hall employees, we had cuts," said Mayor Robert Palmieri in an interview. "So we really had to do some soul searching and employees now are doing two and three different jobs."

A program that paired college students with military researchers at the former Griffiss Air Base in Rome will now move on to other military bases across the country. The Commercialization Academy has helped students get a feel for what it’s like to be an entrepreneur by using patents, developed by the military, that currently aren’t being used.